


Locked Down with Only You for Company

by AsymmetricalButterfly



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:54:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsymmetricalButterfly/pseuds/AsymmetricalButterfly
Summary: Settled into a relationship, a snapshot of life in lockdown for Stef and Nick
Relationships: Nick Kyrgios/Stefanos Tsitsipas
Comments: 11
Kudos: 10





	Locked Down with Only You for Company

**Author's Note:**

> This is a semi-sequel to 'The Feeling's Bittersweet' but works equally as a standalone. Reading the first isn't essential.

“We should get a place together.” 

Thrown out casually, almost as if he were suggesting they change the channel or close the curtains, and it took a few moments for Stef to fully register the words.

Seven weeks - fifty one days, to be exact - of living together, just the two of them, and they’d survived. Thrived even. It had never been a conscious, conclusive moment that led to them staying put and locking down together, more the culmination of their indecision and uncertainty. When it became apparent that tournaments would be cancelled for the foreseeable future, it hadn’t even been a question that they’d be together, the issue was always where. Canberra, Monaco, Bahamas, Nice, all the places they usually drifted to in their spare time had been suggested, each one presenting its own set of issues. So they’d stayed, assuming they’d have time to work out the finer details, sending their teams off with vague commitments to follow them, and then the decision had been taken out of their hands and here they still were.

It had been daunting at first, learning to function on their own terms. Their entire lives were organised around the tennis calendar and by the teams behind them, with only the insubstantial details being left to them most of the time. Even sitting down to write a shopping list had been overwhelming, unchartered territory, Stef frowning at the scrap of paper and agitatedly chewing on the end of the pen until Nick jingled the car keys at him and told him to stop overthinking it; they could work it out along the way. In the aisles of the supermarket it was Nick who took the lead, tossing items into the trolley as he followed through recipes in his head, leaving Stef to obediently push the trolley and cycle back around the aisles as another idea for a meal or a snack that Nick just couldn’t go without struck him. Queuing to pay, Stef surveyed their haul, and a sense of calm came over him. There was no risk of them going hungry anytime soon at least. 

Back home, the food unpacked into cupboards and the fridge-freezer, their roles to keep the apartment functioning seemed to settle upon them naturally. When the piles of clothes strewn down Nick’s side of the bed go to the point where it made Stef itch just to walk into the bedroom, he would gather them up with his own washing from the basket and carry them to the utility room. The first few times, he went through the labels of the garments meticulously and compared them to the symbols he’d researched on the screen of his phone to make sure he didn’t damage any of Nick’s beloved basketball jerseys. By the second week of lockdown, he tossed the whole bundle into the machine, set it to 30 and hoped for the best. It hadn’t done wrong by him so far, not that Nick had seemed to notice that it was Stef’s efforts keeping him clothed. Each day Nick would emerge from the closet wearing fresh hoodie and shorts, never questioning how the supply replenished. 

Naturally Nick didn’t take the same lowkey approach to his household tasks. The kitchen became Nick’s domain and he actively invited admiration and audience as he set to work. Every night, he would take himself off to the kitchen and within minutes the apartment would start to fill with the smells of cuisines from Nick’s childhood; the spices of Malaysia, but most often those of their shared Greek heritage. It was Nick’s way of bringing a little snippet of home to them both, served up on a plate every night and Stef somehow always found himself drifting to the kitchen to watch him at work, Nick lapping up the attention. He’d slice vegetables with swift flair and then toss them into the pan nonchalantly. He’d feed Stef spoonfuls at each stage, always wearing that assured smile in anticipation of the approval that Stef couldn’t help but confirm. Sometimes he would be video-calling his mum, Nill wearing her dressing gown and drinking her morning coffee, flustered and running the back of his hand over his brow as he stood over a simmering pan of chilies, coconut, ginger and lemongrass. While Nick would pout about the consistency being wrong and slam spoons into the sink, Nill would laugh at him and encourage him until his mood came round to her own and they were reminiscing about his grandma’s cooking or his sneaking food from the cupboards as a child. After dinner, Stef would wash the dishes, passing them to Nick for drying as they chattered away about what they’d seen on social media - Nick often in less than complimentary terms - or the latest series they were binging or how their families were getting on.

Back in the realm of normality, both lived primarily with their families and yet somehow Stef felt that their video calls gave them more meaningful time than they’d ever truly had with nothing left but the simplicity of just _talking_. The quick ten minute catch ups often ran into hours. The Tsitsipas’ would slot into their late afternoons, his father often dominating the early minutes of the conversation to question him about his practice, fitness regime and diet, his need to be on the court with him palpable. When the questioning became too incessant, Nick would step in to reassure Apostolos that Stef was putting him to shame on the court and then steer the conversation back to lighter territory where his siblings would listen to Nick with an almost starry-eyed wonder which hadn’t subsided at all since that first introduction. Over the course of these conversations, Stef had come to enjoy watching Nick interact with his family just as much as he enjoyed his own time with them, possibly more. 

Their nights were the domain of the Kyrgios’ as Nick’s family started their days in Australia, a phone often propped in the garden so that they could watch King and Quincy at play, Nick’s eyes filled with affectionate longing as he called to them through the screen. The garden was scattered with toys that they’d chosen together on Amazon, Nick’s entire billing history over the past seven weeks made up of gifts for those he couldn’t be with in person, filling up the vast space he’d left behind in his wake. When they spoke to Nick’s giagiá, it was Nick’s turn to sit and watch Stef with soft pride as he conversed with her in their mother tongue, bringing laughter to all of their faces. Afterwards, he would hear her chastising Nick not to let this handsome Greek boy go, Stef hearing the smile in Nick’s voice as he reassured her that he had no plans to.

It was the times when it was just the two of them filling the rooms that Stef felt most at ease and happiest though. They were wired differently, with Stef rising in the morning and working on his fitness with the makeshift gym equipment he’d pieced together. After showering, he’d busy himself with preparing coffee, letting it cool and then experimenting with an array of flavourings in the blender, always searching for the balance to get Nick’s day off to the perfect start. His latest creation would sit in the fridge until Nick would rise, usually joining him at the table where Stef would be bent over a piece of paper, shading the contours of his latest sketch. The idea had come to him while studying Nick’s profile on the sofa one night. He’d captured Nick hundreds, maybe thousands of times, but the idea of the Nick Kyrgios he saw through his eyes, not through a lense, sketched by his own hands struck him as a worthy hobby to fill the empty hours. It quickly became an obsession as it became apparent that making the image on the paper match up with the imprint on his mind wasn’t going to be an easy pursuit. Hours went into watching YouTube tutorials and ordering new pencils that he was convinced would finally crack the code. Nick observed it all, eyes blurry with sleep, often throwing out teasing comments and just as often throwing out encouraging comments when he could sense Stef’s frustration brimming close to the surface. Occasionally he would pick up a pencil himself, driving Stef to distraction as he drew crude cartoons or love hearts with their names entwined in his more gentle moments.

When Stef was finally satisfied with his day’s efforts, they made lunch together, this time conversing in Greek. Their days always followed the same patterns, but sometimes there were detours. One of those detours was the arrival of an unexplained package and Stef opened it to peer down into a box containing a book: “Read & Speak Greek: For Beginners”. So lunchtime became Greek time, as Stef would speak in slow and exaggerated syllables, Nick watching his mouth form the words, and then Nick would respond in broken Greek pieced together from the book and from his childhood. While they ate, Nick would prop the book up on his lap and write down the ingredients of their meal in Greek and then a short comment on the meal before repeating them back to Stef. It was slow work and even slower progress, but the gesture of Nick’s effort touched him afresh every day.

After lunch was reserved for tennis. There were days when Nick was barely awake as he slipped off his Air Jordans and unzipped his tennis bag, but he was always there, always the obliging practice partner as Stef worked on areas of his own game. Sometimes they would play sets and it continued to infuriate Stef beyond words that he still could not read that serve. There were days when the competitiveness that they both missed from the grind of the tour would burn to the fore, with conversations reduced to abrupt questions and answers about menial matters with the loser lamenting some perceived slight from their opponent.

Always by the evening they came back together though, taking up their spots on the sofa beside each other. Nick on the right and Stef on the left. Nights of video games, television and movies always accompanied by a steady stream of chatter between them. The rhythm that they had found, where one conversation would take them down the path of shared understanding, the back and forth culminating until the thoughts they had were the same, the words eventually being said together, tone and affliction mirrored. And then they laughed, because how else could they express their awe and pleasure at finding somebody who didn’t just finish your sentences for you, but with you? In his darkest moments, it scared him that he might one day be alone and contemplating the prospect of never finding that rhythm with another human again. 

His fears were never more alert than when they switched to the news before bed, seeing the rising figures in proportions that had almost, but never quite become normal. Their hands would unconsciously seek out each other’s, squeezing in acknowledgement of their shared fears and sadness. Before bed, Nick would take his preventer inhaler, their eyes meeting over the bed with Nick always raising his eyebrows in a purposefully casual way as he held onto the breath, Stef often finding he was holding onto it with him, then breathing out together. Where the inhaler once stayed in Nick’s bag, taken only when Nick happened to remember, it now stayed on his bedside table. A constant reminder. 

And then it was just them, in a bed, at night, just like it always was. It was where _they_ started and now where they ended every day together. Lockdown marked the first time that they had shared a bed and hadn’t felt compelled and drawn to sharing their bodies in the most intimate of ways every night. Some nights they simply held each other and where it was once a soul-searching "I love you", it had become an abbreviated "love you", murmured as they drifted off to sleep. It no longer carried the same weighted intent and yet somehow it meant more.

So Stef could see why Nick had come to the conclusion that they could and should find a home together. If this little snapshot of a life they’d built together had shown them anything, it had shown them that they could live away from the bubble of being globe-trotting tennis players and find a simple happiness in just being with each other.

“You mean it?” Stef asked.

“Yeah, why not?”

Stef twisted on the sofa so that he was facing him, “Where?”

“I dunno, anywhere.”

Stef let out a breath of laughter. Always so casual, even when discussing matters which would take their relationship to a level they’d never discussed before. A level which so clearly set out the landscape of forever.

“Canberra?”

“Nah, we can always stay at my parents’ place back home.”

“How about Monaco? We could find a bigger place, a place for us,” Stef suggested innocently.

“Absolutely not, no way. I mean, you can’t even like breathe there without bumping into another tennis player. I am not getting a place where every time I go for a coffee I risk Novak Djokovic trying to get to me to join some hippy cult or something.”

The “hippy cult”, said with such cutting, caused Stef to laugh involuntarily. It had never been a serious suggestion, not after Nick’s only previous visit there had gone so awry. The appreciation he had for the views on arrival, back-lit by the luxury of wealth, had quickly been replaced by a mortified exasperation when they found themselves seated two tables away from Novak and Jelena Djokovic at dinner that night. After a quick round of stilted civilities, Nick had spent the rest of their meal carefully avoiding eye contact, passing on the options of starter and dessert and asking for the bill at the first opportunity. Stef had found the whole thing wildly entertaining, teasing Nick that his pescatarian diet was to blame, and Nick might perhaps have come round to the same view had he not found himself looking across to the car next to him while waiting at traffic lights the next day and seen Milos Raonic at the steering wheel. 

“Bahamas?”

It was Nick’s turn to suggest, twisting his own body so that he was facing Stef, resting his head on the cushions of the sofa. 

Stef considered the proposition for a moment, but then shook his head, “I like Bahamas, but I think more for holidays.”

“True, true,” Nick murmured.

They sat facing each other, frowning slightly with thoughtfulness as their minds took them around the world, each searching their memories for that perfect place where they could build a home together.

“What about Greece?” Nick asked, his face lighting up.

Stef smiled softly, almost wistfully, “I want to show you all of Greece, but I think that you would not be happy there forever. And I think that your Greek needs a lot more work yet.”

Nick grinned at this, taking the comment in the spirit it was intended, “I hate to break it to you, but we’re running out places.”

“We have a whole world to choose from,” Stef said softly.

At this, Nick reached into his pocket and withdrew his phone. Stef peered over at the screen while Nick navigated to his search engine and typed in “random country”, tapping the first website that came up. On opening the page, they were faced with the Russian flag and turned to look at each other, amusement already playing around Nick’s eyes.

“I don’t think they let people who call their citizens “bullshit Russians” in,” Nick said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“My mother is Russian!” Stef defended.

“Yeah well I hope you don’t call her that, méli. I wouldn’t want to see Julia when she’s angry…”

Rolling his eyes but unable to keep the smile from his face, Stef jabbed the random generator on Nick’s phone again. It threw up a flag that neither of them recognised and they both leaned in, squinting at the country’s name.

“Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha,” Stef murmured, “A long name to say at airports.”

“Genuinely never heard of that place in my entire life,” Nick said, tapping the screen again.

The Greek flag. Their eyes met and they couldn’t help laugh as Nick shook his head and slid the phone back into his pocket, groaning with exasperation.

“Perhaps it is not the home that we choose, but the intention to choose at all that is what matters,” Stef pondered.

“You get that from a book?” Nick teased.

“From my heart.”

Moving closer to Nick on the sofa, Stef kissed him gently on the tip of the nose and traced a finger along Nick’s “Inspire others” tattoo. 

“We’ll find somewhere,” Nick reassured.

“For sure.” 

“FIFA?”


End file.
